n awful silence divided to make way for me. I snatched a light,
and rushing up stairs, and hearing a groan, without reflection I threw open
the door of the first room that presented itself. It was quite dark; but,
as I stept within, a pernicious scent assailed my senses, producing
sickening qualms, which made their way to my very heart, while I felt my
leg clasped, and a groan repeated by the person that held me. I lowered my
lamp, and saw a negro half clad, writhing under the agony of disease, while
he held me with a convulsive grasp. With mixed horror and impatience I
strove to disengage myself, and fell on the sufferer; he wound his naked
festering arms round me, his face was close to mine, and his breath,
death-laden, entered my vitals. For a moment I was overcome, my head was
bowed by aching nausea; till, reflection returning, I sprung up, threw the
wretch from me, and darting up the staircase, entered the chamber usually
inhabited by my family. A dim light shewed me Alfred on a couch; Clara
trembling, and paler than whitest snow, had raised him on her arm, holding
a cup of water to his lips. I saw full well that no spark of life existed
in that ruined form, his features were rigid, his eyes glazed, his head had
fallen back. I took him from her, I laid him softly down, kissed his cold
little mouth, and turned to speak in a vain whisper, when loudest sound of
thunderlike cannon could not have reached him in his immaterial abode.

And where was Idris? That she had gone out to seek me, and had not
returned, were fearful tidings, while the rain and driving wind clattered
against the window, and roared round the house. Added to this, the
sickening sensation of disease gained upon me; no time was to be lost, if
ever I would see her again. I mounted my horse and rode out to seek her,
fancying that I heard her voice in every gust, oppressed by fever and
aching pain.

I rode in the dark and rain through the labyrinthine streets of unpeopled
London. My child lay dead at home; the seeds of mortal disease had taken
root in my bosom; I went to seek Idris, my adored, now wandering alone,
while the waters were rushing from heaven like a cataract to bathe her dear
head in chill damp, her fair limbs in numbing cold. A female stood on the
step of a door, and called to me as I gallopped past. It was not Idris; so
I rode swiftly on, until a kind of second sight, a reflection back again on
my senses of what I had seen but not marked, ma